ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court Judge Justice Athar Minallah says the Supreme Court, by design or omission, has too often been employed as an instrument to suppress the will of the people rather than safeguarding it.
In line with the fellow Judge Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Minallah also wrote a seven-page letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Yahya Afridi on October 8, 2025 on the 27th Constitutional Amendment Bill that sailed through the Senate the other day.
He urged the chief justice to convene a judicial conference for having an open institutional dialogue with all judges of the apex court and the High Courts to consider threats to the independence of the judiciary that might jeopardize its constitutional function of acting as a machinery for enforcement of fundamental rights of citizens.
“A candid and open discussion on the state of our institution, the challenges to its independence and the steps necessary to reclaim the people’s trust has become inevitable,” Justice Minallah wrote.
He said the judiciary was at a perilous crossroad; therefore, the truth must be spoken at this moment of reckoning.
The judge said the Parliament that must act as a repository of the will of the people might wish to consider the judiciary’s institutional perspective articulated through the proposed judicial conference, before it embarked upon tinkering with the basic law of the land, the Constitution.
“Let the convening of a judicial convention be an opportunity for truth and reconciliation within the institution so that we have an opportunity to acknowledge our collective shortcomings,” Justice Minallah wrote.
“From the validation of the dissolution of the first expression of the will of the people, the Constituent Assembly, to the repeated endorsements of unconstitutional interventions by unelected power centers, our jurisprudence has too often bowed before might and power instead of standing on the side of the people,” he wrote.
“The unconstitutional removal and subsequent judicial execution of the elected prime minister Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, by men in robes sworn to protect the right to life, remains one of the gravest and most unpardonable betrayals of our oath and of the people’s trust,” he said.
“It was an act of allegiance to an unelected usurper in uniform rather to the Constitution and the will of the nation,” the judge maintained.
Justice Minallah recalled that the persecution of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto by unelected elements within the state institutions, and later the disqualification, humiliation and harassment of former prime minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and his daughter, the current chief minister of Punjab, were not isolated events but a continuation of a pattern of suppression of the people’s will when the interests of the unelected elite were threatened.
“It took forty long years for the judges of this very court to publicly acknowledge that it was complicit in the judicial murder of a popular leader, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and more gravely, in the suppression of the will of the people itself,” Justice Minallah wrote.
He said no apology was ever offered to the people whose faith was violated, nor repentance shown for being instruments of oppression against their representatives.
Justice Minallah noted that not a single judge had ever been held accountable for suppressing the will of the people, not even those who sent a human being to the gallows simply because it was demanded by a uniformed dictator.
“Today yet another elected leader, the former prime minister, Imran Khan, finds himself victimised under the same cycle of suppression,” Justice Minallah wrote adding that political dissent had been criminalized, those who refuse to bend, including women, were made to endure unhuman conditions.
“It is no longer a secret that justice is denied to them,” Justice Minallah continued and questioned would the victims of today be justified in perceiving the courts as enablers of oppression.
The judge said the tragic script once inflicted upon the leaders of the other political parties at various times in the past was being replayed.
“Must we wait another forty years for the judiciary to acknowledge its complicity in denying justice to the will of the people of today,” the judge questioned but said it was precisely because the judiciary had been historically captured and continued to serve as a guardian of the power elite rather than as a guardian of the Constitution and the peoples’ sovereign will.
He further recalled that the recent dismantling of the Islamabad High Court stood as a classic example of punishing a court that had earned confidence and trust of the people across the country.
“Its only crime was that it had earned the trust of the people and the ire of the unelected powerful elite centers,” the judge said, adding that the truth recorded by six courageous judges of the Islamabad High Court through a letter and later affirmed by fearless judges of other High Courts through responses placed before this court during the judicial proceedings was an opportunity for redemption of the wrongs committed.
“Regrettably, the Supreme Court chose to stand beside the forces that had attacked the independence of a constitutional court trusted by the people, so much so that the minutes of two full court meetings, for obvious reasons, remained concealed from public view,” Justice Minallah wrote.
“We proclaim ourselves to be guardians of the fundamental rights, but we maintained silence when a former chief justice of Pakistan told us that the phenomenon of enforced disappearance had reached his doorsteps.
“We also chose to look the other way when another chief justice, who in the context of the reserved seats case, had warned twelve judges of this very Court that he was the one responsible for stalling the imposition of martial law and that ‘they’ “would come and send us home,” the judge wrote.
He however, said many such instances could be recounted but perhaps not required for the purpose of this letter adding that the reality was known to all within these walls and external interference was no longer an open secret; it was a reality and undeniable truth.
The casualty are those who dare to speak the truth as has happened in the case of the Islamabad High Court,” the judge said, adding that accountability was used as a weapon to tame and control judges who refused to bend and abdicated fidelity to their oath and the Constitution.
“It is our humble conviction that the judiciary’s foremost duty of loyalty lies not in self-preservation nor in deference to power but in allegiance to the people and to the Constitution.
“This court and the judiciary as an institution are at a perilous crossroad and silence in the face of the systemic erosion of judicial independence would only amount to complicity,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, former chief justice of Pakistan Jawad S Khwaja Tuesday petitioned the Supreme Court against the proposed 27th Constitutional Amendment.
The petition was filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution, making the Federation of Pakistan as respondent through the secretary law, justice and parliamentary affairs.
Justice (retd) Jawad prays the apex court to declare that the parliament may not amend the Constitution so as to reduce or abolish any constitutional jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
He further prays the apex court to declare that notwithstanding the terms of any such amendment, the Supreme Court retains the exclusive jurisdiction and/or power to determine the lawfulness and constitutionality of the same, strike down such provisions in any Act of Parliament, including the Constitution (Twenty-seventh Amendment) Act 2025, which reduce or abolish any constitutional jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Pakistan or which purport to vest any such jurisdiction in any other court or body together with any related provisions.
Similarly, he also prays the apex court to strike down such provisions of the 27th Amendment which relate to transfer of the High Court judges.
He submits that until final decision of this petition and as a matter of urgency, this court may be pleased to suspend the effectiveness or operation of those provisions of the Constitution (Twenty-seventh Amendment) Act 2025 which reduce or abolish any constitutional jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and vest the same in any other court or body.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Senator and former president of Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Hamid Khan Tuesday rejected the proposed 27th constitutional amendment saying they will not challenge it in the court, as they did not accept it.
Flanked by Munir A Malik and Abid S Zubairi, former presidents of Supreme Court Bar Association, Hamid Khan told a press conference outside the Supreme Court that the current setup had totally failed to maintain law and order in the country.
He strongly condemned the loss of lives in the suicide blast outside the District Judicial Complex in Islamabad’s G-11 sector, leaving at least 12 martyred and 36 injured.
To a question, Hamid Khan said they would not challenge the 27th constitutional amendment as they didn’t accept it.
Munir A Malik also rejected the amendment saying apart from offering Fateha for the persons martyred in the suicide blast, the same should also be offered for the 27th constitutional Amendment.
Meanwhile, Abid S Zubairi, read out the resolution rejecting the 27th amendment saying the amendment was nothing short of unconstitutional assault — an attempt by a parliament, devoid of legitimacy, moral and legal authority, to mutilate the very foundations of the 1973 Constitution.
“There is no room for any Federal Constitutional Court in the presence of the Supreme Court,” says the resolution, rejecting both the 26th and 27th amendments saying the proposed Federal Constitutional Court was an illegal creation designed to hijack constitutional interpretation and neutralize judicial independence. It called upon the lawyers in Pakistan to boycott what it called the so-called court and refuse to legitimize with their appearance. The immunity granted to the president and the commanders of the armed forces is a violation of both the Constitution and clear injunctions of Islam that no one is above the law,” says the resolution. It further stated that these amendments were a direct attack on Pakistan’s constitutional identity and must be resisted with full democratic force.
